There's an Amoeba in My Soup

Today we buried the last man of our parents’ generation in my mother’s immediate family. I looked at my oldest male cousins as we mingled and talked with each other when the ceremony was finished. In a couple of years they will hit retirement age. They’re the patriarchs now and both are good men. They treasure the old photographs and stories, and both in separate ways are creating archives. But I don’t think either one of them would like to assume the role of patriarch.

I would like my grandparents and my parents to be alive still so no one has to change roles in the family. I don’t enjoy feeling like an amoeba swimming in unfamiliar soup.

But life is a series of changes, isn’t it? It’s a series of necessary interludes, like winter, like the gathering forces of early spring, the fruiting of summer, the harvest in the fall. The cycle exists for the good of all.

This is the hymn sung at my Unc's service, one of my all-time favorites.


I Come To The Garden Alone